Ag Town of the Year

The Hon. N.J. CENTOFANTI (Leader of the Opposition) (15:04): Supplementary, Mr President?

The PRESIDENT: If it's got anything to do with regional rail, I am going to rule it out.

The Hon. N.J. CENTOFANTI: I promise it doesn't. Did the minister consult with these finalist agricultural towns on her Biosecurity Bill?

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Interjections are out of order, especially when you are not in your seat.

The Hon. C.M. SCRIVEN (Minister for Primary Industries and Regional Development, Minister for Forest Industries) (15:04): The Biosecurity Bill which is before parliament at the moment has had a long iteration. It has been in development over a number of years, and I think that is why it's very important to look at now moving this legislation forward. The review of the existing legislation started under the previous Marshall Liberal government. It then stalled for probably about 12 to 18 months before the election, and then we were able to reinvigorate it upon coming to government.

There has been a long amount of consultation. Given that the former government didn't release the consultation response paper when they were in government, we needed to go over a lot of that ground again. The opportunities for feedback on it have been extensive. No doubt, the fact that we now have multiple commodity groups—Primary Producers SA, for example, as well as their member organisations—all indicating that they would like to now see that legislation progress as soon as possible is, I think, a testament to how important it is.